MXenes: the versatile materials still searching for their first big market
It looks like a jar of muddy water. Yet the dark liquid contains a material that has inspired thousands of scientific papers and proposed uses ranging from batteries and medical sensors to water filters and hydrogen production.
Floating in the liquid are MXenes: microscopic sheets of transition-metal carbides, nitrides or carbonitrides, only a few atoms thick. Scientists have been experimenting with them since 2011, when researchers at Drexel University in the United States reported the first member of this unusual family.
The attraction is not one record-breaking property. It is the combination. MXenes can be highly conductive, chemically active and relatively easy to turn into films, coatings or inks. Their composition can also be adjusted for different jobs.
Fifteen years after their discovery, however, they have yet to establish a substantial mass market. MXenes offer a revealing example of the distance between discovering a remarkable material and making something useful from it.
What MXenes are and how they are made
MXenes begin inside layered crystals known as MAX phases. Scientists chemically remove one type of atomic layer and then separate those that remain. The result resembles an impossibly thin stack of metallic cards.
The name MAX describes the ingredients. M represents an early transition metal, such as titanium. A is usually an element from groups 13 or 14 of the periodic table, such as aluminium or silicon. X is carbon, nitrogen or both.
Remove the A layer and a MXene remains.
The best-known example is titanium carbide, usually written as Ti₃C₂Tₓ. The letters and numbers describe its atomic composition, while Tₓ represents chemical groups attached to the newly exposed surfaces. These frequently contain oxygen, hydroxyl or fluorine, depending partly on how the material was produced.
Those surface groups are central to the story. They influence how a MXene interacts with water, ions and other substances. Researchers can alter its behaviour by changing the elements in the underlying sheet, its structure and the chemistry of its surface.
MXene is therefore not the name of one substance. It describes a large and expanding family of two-dimensional materials.
“Two-dimensional” does not necessarily mean one atom thick. It describes flakes that are extremely thin compared with their width and length, allowing their surfaces to dominate how they behave.
MXenes versus graphene
Comparisons between MXenes and graphene are inevitable. Both form extremely thin sheets and can conduct electricity, but they are not rival versions of the same material.
Graphene is a single layer of carbon atoms arranged in a honeycomb pattern. It can be exceptionally strong, light and conductive. Those properties generated enormous excitement after it was isolated in 2004, but producing consistent material and incorporating it into affordable products have proved difficult.
MXenes offer a different proposition.
Many are electrically conductive, while their surfaces can interact with ions and molecules. Some, including the widely studied Ti₃C₂Tₓ, can form stable water-based dispersions. Researchers can use these as inks or apply them by spraying, printing or coating.
Graphene is a celebrated individual. MXenes are an extended family whose members can be selected and modified for particular jobs.
That processability could prove as important as raw performance. A material is of limited industrial value if it cannot be deposited on a component, combined with other substances or manufactured repeatedly.
But active surfaces come with a disadvantage. The chemistry that makes MXenes adaptable can also leave them vulnerable to oxidation and degradation.
How MXenes could improve batteries
Energy storage is one of the most intensively researched MXene applications.
A rechargeable battery works by moving ions between two electrodes. Materials that offer accessible surfaces and allow ions and electrons to travel quickly are therefore attractive. MXenes combine electrical conductivity with a layered structure into which ions can enter.
Researchers are investigating MXenes in lithium-ion, sodium-ion and other battery chemistries. Depending on the design, they may act as electrode materials, conductive additives, protective layers or hosts for other active substances.
They are also being explored in supercapacitors. These devices generally store less energy than batteries but can charge and release it rapidly.
Surface chemistry again plays an important role. Altering the groups attached to a MXene can change how ions interact with it and how easily they move between its layers.
This does not mean that a MXene battery will soon recharge a smartphone in seconds. An experimental electrode is only one part of a cell. A commercial battery must also remain safe, retain its capacity and survive repeated charging.
The first useful role may be less dramatic: a small amount of MXene that improves conductivity, stabilises an electrode or helps an existing battery design deliver power more quickly.
MXenes and green-hydrogen production
MXenes are also being studied for use in electrolysers that produce green hydrogen.
An electrolyser uses electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. Catalysts accelerate the reactions and reduce the energy required. Platinum is particularly effective at catalysing the hydrogen evolution reaction, but it is expensive and scarce.
Certain MXenes have shown catalytic activity of their own. Others are being tested as conductive supports for platinum or less expensive catalytic materials. Their large, adjustable surfaces could provide sites where reactions occur while helping electrons reach them efficiently.
The MXene does not generate hydrogen independently. It could become one component of an electrolyser that uses less precious metal or converts electricity more efficiently.
Laboratory performance is not sufficient, however. The material would have to retain its activity and structure during prolonged operation under demanding electrochemical conditions.
Shielding, sensors and conductive inks
Batteries and hydrogen could have enormous impact, but relatively straightforward MXene coatings may offer a shorter route to market.
Thin films can provide strong electromagnetic-interference shielding. This could help protect sensitive electronics without relying entirely on thicker or heavier metal shields—an attractive prospect for aerospace equipment, telecommunications hardware and increasingly crowded electronic devices.
Conductive inks present another plausible early use. A water-based MXene dispersion can be printed or sprayed onto a flexible circuit, antenna, textile or heating element. Rather than replacing the whole product, the material would add a specific function to its surface.
Sensors exploit a different characteristic. When selected MXenes encounter pressure, movement, moisture, gases or biological molecules, their electrical response can change. Researchers are using this behaviour to develop experimental medical patches, environmental monitors and wearable devices.
Other proposed MXene applications include membranes for water treatment and drug-delivery systems. These generally require further work on stability, safety and performance under realistic conditions.
The breadth of this list is exciting, but it also invites caution. A material proposed for medicine, batteries, clean water, aerospace and hydrogen is not necessarily close to commercial success in all—or any—of them.
The companies commercialising MXenes
Most current MXene business activity sits upstream, supplying research material or developing manufacturing processes.
Sigma-Aldrich, part of Merck, sells titanium carbide MXene and has published technical information about its potential in batteries and hydrogen evolution. Japan Material Technologies Corporation also offers Ti₃C₂Tₓ. These suppliers allow more laboratories to study MXenes without synthesising every sample from scratch.
Research availability is an important step, but it is not equivalent to mass production. A scientist may need enough material to coat a small electrode. A manufacturer needs repeatable performance across millions of components.
MXene Inc., a spin-out from Drexel University, is developing larger-scale production and conductive inks for electronics, energy storage and electromagnetic shielding. The company is attempting to turn academic methods into materials with the consistency and volume industrial customers require.
Japan’s Murata Manufacturing provides evidence of interest farther down the supply chain. The electronic-components group licensed MXene technology from Drexel and has investigated highly conductive films. In 2024, Murata told Chemical & Engineering News that it hoped to launch a MXene-based product within three years, although it did not disclose the intended applications. No corresponding mass-market product has yet been publicly identified.
These organisations represent different stages of an emerging ecosystem: supplying scientists, scaling production and testing integration into electronics. The missing element is large, sustained demand from manufacturers.
The obstacles to large-scale MXene production
Producing MXenes traditionally requires aggressive chemicals. Direct hydrofluoric-acid etching is one route, while other widely used methods form hydrofluoric acid during the process. Fluoride-free alternatives are being developed, but every approach brings trade-offs involving safety, cost, speed and control over surface chemistry.
Stability presents another obstacle. Ti₃C₂Tₓ dispersions can oxidise in water and when exposed to oxygen or elevated temperatures. Oxidation changes the material and can reduce the conductivity or chemical activity that made it useful.
Manufacturers must also control flake size, defects and surface terminations. Two batches sold under the same general MXene name may behave differently because they were etched, washed, separated or stored in different ways.
Even “scalable” is a relative term. In 2020, a Drexel team reported a process producing 50-gram batches—an important advance over small laboratory quantities, but still far removed from continuous high-volume manufacturing.
MXenes have already shown that they can do remarkable things under controlled conditions. They must now survive storage, emerge consistently from production and improve a product enough to justify their cost.
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